Fans verbally attack women's sports activists at WNBA Finals in San Francisco
XX-XY Athletics founder and CEO Jennifer Sey said fans hurled insults over her group’s shirts supporting women’s sports. She urged adults to defend female athletes, writing that sex “IS real” and young women “should not have to carry this burden alone.”
Women’s sports advocate Jennifer Sey said Golden State Valkyries fans shouted insults, made obscene gestures, and told her to kill herself during Game 1 of the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) Finals Oct. 17 in San Francisco, which she attended wearing an XX-XY Athletics shirt.
Sey, a former elite gymnast who founded the apparel company XX-XY Athletics to advocate for keeping men out of women’s sports, attended the game with three friends who also wore the brand’s shirts. The Valkyries defeated the Atlanta Dream 68-64 at Chase Center.
Sey wrote on Substack that tensions escalated after halftime when a woman across the aisle pointed toward her group and appeared to alert security. According to OutKick, another video posted online shows the woman holding a “Trans Lives Matter” sign.
Security escorted the woman up the stairs before separately asking Sey and her friends to leave their seats for a conversation, according to Sey’s account. As her group walked through the stands, she said, multiple spectators directed obscenities and hostile gestures at them.
“People flipped us off, screamed in our faces, and told us to kill ourselves,” Sey wrote. “An older gay man said he wanted me to die. He was inches from my face. A younger woman told me to kill myself.”
Sey said she recorded only part of the confrontation and “didn’t catch even half of it on video.”
“It was an onslaught. To anyone who thinks this s*** is just on social media, you would be sorely mistaken,” she wrote. “I walked through an internet pile on — but in real life. It’s not fun.”
According to Sey, security told the group that other spectators had complained they were harassing and provoking people by pointing at their shirts and toward the jumbotron.
Security asked them not to point at their shirts again but did not require them to cover the clothing or leave the arena, she said. The group returned to their seats to watch the rest of the game.
“They scolded us. But let us return to our seats, much to the disappointment of the mob in the arena, which jeered at us all the way down back to our seats as well,” Sey recounted. “They were very disappointed we were allowed back in to watch the end of the game.”
Sey told OutKick that security offered her group an escort out of the building because the Valkyries fans grew so hostile.
In her account, Sey said she and her friends “are not the caricature of ‘right-wing MAGA conservatives’ that the world would have you believe.” She said “three of the four of us are lesbians” and that all four had been Democrats “at some point in our lives.”
“We simply believe women’s sports are for women,” she added. “We wore our XX-XY Athletics shirts on purpose. Visibility matters. The other side has spent years treating ordinary recognition of sex as a provocation that requires public confrontation. We took the cue.”
The WNBA faced similar criticism Aug. 16 after security ordered Georgia mother Kasey Thomason and her 17-year-old daughter, Annie, to cover their XX-XY Athletics shirts or leave State Farm Arena, where they were watching a game between the Indiana Fever and Atlanta Dream, as Zeale News previously reported. The pair put on Atlanta Dream shirts over their clothing to stay for the remainder of the game. A WNBA spokesperson later acknowledged the incident “should not have happened.”
The league has been at the center of controversy for months amid pressure to clarify its “transgender” eligibility policies that appear to allow men to compete in the women’s program. Its collective bargaining agreement restricts participation to women but does not specify eligibility based on gender “identity” or sex. No male athlete has played in the league.
In another similar incident in August, security removed former National Basketball Association (NBA) player Enes Kanter Freedom from a Chicago Sky game following a confrontation with Sky player Natasha Cloud. Freedom wore a T-shirt with the slogan “WOMAN, noun. adult human female.”
Freedom sued the Chicago Sky Sept. 3, alleging that the team and public authorities violated his First Amendment rights by ejecting him and banning him from future home games over his advocacy for women’s sports.
>> ‘See you in court!’: Enes Kanter Freedom sues Chicago Sky over ejection from WNBA game <<
Freedom had announced Aug. 7 that he planned to enter the 2027 WNBA draft in a bid to highlight the need to protect women’s sports, saying if all a man needs to do to compete in the league is declare “who you are,” then “I meet every single requirement necessary.” He later called on the WNBA to clarify its eligibility policies for male athletes.
In her Substack account, Sey said her experience reinforced her belief that adults should publicly defend female athletes.
“Sex IS real. And young female athletes should not have to carry this burden alone,” Sey wrote. “If adults who know better stay silent out of fear, how can we ask teenagers to speak? How can we expect sanity to return?”
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